EduGeek Classroom Control Toolbar (ECC) First Look

[ICTNUT]

Hi All,

Well now that the conf is over and after speaking with a few people down there including a long conversation with Dos_Box I have come up with a new Classroom Control Toolbar for Teachers, yes thats right Teachers.

What does it do I hear you all cry, well.....

1 - Allows Staff to turn on or off the internet on a classroom by classroom or PC by PC basis
2 - Allows delegated staff to change and /or force change students passwords
3 - Allows staff to logoff, restart, or shutdown whole classrooms or individual PCs in a given classrom

What does it look like I hear youall shout, well here are a couple of teaser screenshots.....

Toolbar:


Turn Internet On:


Change Password 1:


Change Password 2:


About:


Where can we get it?

It will be released in the coming week and most likely through the edugeek projects site but I will post an update here once it is out.

Just looking for feedback at the moment

[mossj]

Looks sweet in a office 2003 esk way, will be looking at installing it when it comes out!

Few questions
1. Does anything need to be deployed? Just teacher? whole class? or wack on share and forget?

2. Where does it pull the room lists/computer names from (I assume a text file but looking for confirmation)?

3. Can it do individual computers or only classrooms?

*Also your change password pictures aren't working

[ICTNUT]

3. Can it do individual computers or only classrooms?

It sure can, you just need to select an individual pc in that room and away you go.

2. Where does it pull the room lists/computer names from (I assume a text file but looking for confirmation)?

Its a simple text file with one pc name or IP per line, this way you can deploy the toolbar to a room with only that room list available. This will stop people doing stuff in other rooms, but for an admin you can have the full list of rooms

1. Does anything need to be deployed? Just teacher? whole class? or wack on share and forget?

All that is required is .Net 2.0 on each PC you wish to run this one, the app itself is lightweight coming in at 264k. The installer will check if you have the correct framework and if not propmt you to install it.

*Also your change password pictures aren't working

Fixing now......

[Sylv3r]

Looks good.

Is it possible to give staff access to disable the internet only and not restarting machines as well as changing passwords options?

Thanks

[Soulfish]

This looks great . Like Sylv3r I'd be interested to know if you can restrict the options teachers see?

[meastaugh1]

Yes, looks very useful if you don't currently have a solution to this common requirement. What change does it make to the clients to disable internet acccess?

[ICTNUT]

Looks good.

Is it possible to give staff access to disable the internet only and not restarting machines as well as changing passwords options?

Thanks

You can turn each of the options on or off, by default all are on but through a configuration file you can change that.

Just a note withregard to changing passwords you will need to delegate permssions to staff that you wish to allow to change passwords and you set the base OU at which the search is started, so if you have a students OU set the base to the and no other user (staff or otherwise) can have thier passwords changed.

[ICTNUT]

Yes, looks very useful if you don't currently have a solution to this common requirement. What change does it make to the clients to disable internet acccess?

Supports IE and Firefox at the moment and simply updates the proxy settings by adding 127.0.0.1 and port 1 for each of the browers.

[meastaugh1]

Supports IE and Firefox at the moment and simply updates the proxy settings by adding 127.0.0.1 and port 1 for each of the browers.

Makes sense, should that require a browser restart to take effect? I appreciate it doesn't when you change it interactively but not sure how it works if making the changes remotely.

[ICTNUT]

Makes sense, should that require a browser restart to take effect? I appreciate it doesn't when you change it interactively but not sure how it works if making the changes remotely.

Testing so far shows no restart required but this will need further testing in school once GPOs have been applied and restrictions put in place.

[Gatt]

Looks good..

How does settings the proxy to 127.0.0.1:1 cope with Group Policy refresh? As that wuld reset the new proxy settings to the GPO values... ?

[Sylv3r]

Testing so far shows no restart required but this will need further testing in school once GPOs have been applied and restrictions put in place.

Will staff have to remember to re-enable the internet for the machines at the end of the lesson or does this work automatically when the staff member logs off?

[ICTNUT]

Looks good..

How does settings the proxy to 127.0.0.1:1 cope with Group Policy refresh? As that wuld reset the new proxy settings to the GPO values... ?

Exactly that is it, further testing will need to be done on this very thing.

What I do know is that by default group policy refresh happens every 90 mins with a randomisation of period of between 0 mins and 24 hours so in theory it should not really come into play given the length of a normal lesson.

[ICTNUT]

Will staff have to remember to re-enable the internet for the machines at the end of the lesson or does this work automatically when the staff member logs off?

In essence no as the proxy settings are on a per user basis and as soon as the user logs of and on again the proxy settings would be rest as per GPO as these are applied at logon.

[FN-GM]

Exactly that is it, further testing will need to be done on this very thing.

What I do know is that by default group policy refresh happens every 90 mins with a randomisation of period of between 0 mins and 24 hours so in theory it should not really come into play given the length of a normal lesson.

Allot of IT lessons at our place are 2 and 3 hours at a time, this would pose as a problem?

Wouldn't editing the localhost file be better as we talked about at the conf?

I know i am jumping the Gun here but i have some ideas for new features.

Website banning - Ban websites form the control machine by editing the localhost file on the clients.

Internet banning - Allows teachers to ban a students internet. The app could add the to an AD group that has no internet wither using group policy or webfilter. - Also possibly something on the DC to un-ban them after a certain amount of time.

Locked out accounts - Allow staff to unlock students accounts that are locked out.